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Frederick the Great (1712-1786)

Monarch of Prussia from 1740 to his death in 1786, he fought two (not entirely necessary) wars against impossible odds and won, while at the same time nursing an on-again off-again bromance with Voltaire and supporting the sciences and arts. Our Frederick is mainly the young Frederick – a flute-playing pleasure hound who spent hours in the company of his best philosophical buddies. He “procured” a hat that allows him to travel through time and space. (First Appearance: Episode One!)

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

Sixteenth President of the United States, this Abe was found by the team while still a lanky backwoods tough, and was subsequently aged by a Terribly Cunning British weapon. Has since been given the ability to communicate with woodland critters, and the curse/blessing of transforming into Flaveraham Lincoln whenever he hears the music of downtrodden peoples. (First Appearance: Episode 104!)

Peter the Great (1672-1725)

The man who threw a continent into decades of war in the name of a good all-year port, Peter the Great was undoubtedly one of the most dynamic figures in European history. Amateur surgeon, expert dwarf marriage arranger, and energetic modernizer, he was precisely what Russia needed to lurch into the modern age. Our Peter has some moderate… Swede issues. (First Appearance: Episode 37!)

Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

The man who invented a new branch of mathematics in order to invent modern physics, arguably the greatest scientific mind the world ever knew until he went a bit batty hunting down counterfeiters as part of his work as Warden of the Royal Mint, our Newton has been reluctantly participating in Frederick’s adventures since nearly the beginning, all while working his own terribly mysterious angles. (First Appearance: Episode 10!)

Voltaire (1694-1778)

When he wasn’t living it up in his scientific love shack with Emilie du Chatelet or mouldering in jail for having insulted basically everybody, Voltaire was the lifelong correspondent of Frederick the Great. They tried living together at Sanssouci for a while, only to have the experiment fall through due to Voltaire’s thoroughly awkward attempts at spying and Frederick’s own propensity for caustic remarks. Our Voltaire tends to stay behind at the team’s Stasis Year base, overseeing the Chronicle of Time and generally misbehaving philosophically. (First Appearance: Episode Three!)

Sometimes Allies

Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE)

The man who conquered the known world and beyond before the age of 35, our Alexander, on a bender with Frederick and Peter, ended up fundamentally rewriting the fate of Russia. (First Appearance: Episode 246!)

Archimedes (287 – 212 BCE)

Possibly the greatest mathematician ever, his miraculous siege engines nearly fended off the entire Roman army in the Punic Wars. He loved math to distraction, which Ethan Allen and Thresher used to temporarily turn him to the Dark Side. (First Appearance: Episode 75!)

Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876)

The great Russian anarchist whose tireless efforts to free those oppressed by the Russian Empire’s autocratic rule, he is the second acquisition of Newton’s secret operations team. (First Appearance: Newtonstravaganza 5!)

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Euler recruited Beethoven shortly after the composition of the tragic Heilegenstadt Testament, in which Beethoven poured out the sorrow he felt at his encroaching deafness. He and Dora Carrington are effectively Euler’s replacements for Dickinson, and eventually join to form the beast Agony. (First Appearance: Winter special 2011: Part 1!)

James Boole (1815-1864)

Logician extraordinaire, he is summoned, along with Bertrand Russell, to organize the perfect Heist on behalf of the Power of Time. (First Appearance: Episode 668!)

Anne Boleyn (1501-1536)

Anne grew up in the Seduction Academy of King Francis I of France, and turned her training to the turning Henry VIII’s head from his non-heir-producing wife, Catherine of Aragon. Our Anne works with Leonhard Euler to fight Ignatius’s attempt to undo the Scientific Revolution. (First Appearance: Episode 46!)

Wernher von Braun (1912-1977)

The rocket scientist behind both the V2 and Saturn V rockets, and the cheerleader of the American space program in the Sixties and Seventies, von Braun was “Dr. Space.” Frederick enlists his rocketry expertise to fix a damaged Necrohunter. (First Appearance: Episode 510!)

Joseph Campbell (1904-1987)

An expert on world mythologies, Frederick’s team brings him into the Collective Unconscious to stop Picasso and Jung’s cunning scheme. (First Appearance: Episode 398!)

Dora Carrington (1893-1932)

Artist and dear friend of the writer Lytton-Strachey, she committed suicide after his death. After nobly giving up Dickinson, Euler employs her as a partial replacement and member of a special three person team with a very secret purpose. (First Appearance: Winter Special 2011, Part 1!)

Queen Christina of Sweden (1626-1689)

The irrepressible daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, Christina ruled Sweden, basically killed Descartes, and then gave up the throne to go on an implausible journey to Italy to convert to Catholicism and reorganize the European balance of power. Her spirit of adventure causes her to follow Tertiary Crankshaft to America, where she ends up a ruler on the American frontier. (First Appearance: Tertiary Crankshaft Special, Part 1!)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

The great Romantic poet whose poem, Xanadu, is necessary to Frederick’s Great Heist in order to inspire Orson Welles. Another satisfied Dirty Charlemagne customer. (First Appearance: Episode 681!)

Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658)

The leader of the civil war that executed Charles I and subsequently established himself as the Lord Protector of England. Our Oliver falls in love with Queen Christina of Sweden on the American frontier, with the expected results. (First Appearance: Episode 183!)

Eugene Debs (1855-1926)

America’s first and basically only Socialist presidential candidate, his anti-war stance landed him in jail in spite of Clarence Darrow’s spirited defense. He appears as the spirit of incarceration to Frederick and Newton early in our tale. (First Appearance: Episode 20!)

Captain Delaflote (The Far Future)

The captain of the spaceship which Ethan Allen retreats to in the Far Future story arc, and somehow the descendant of a person who no longer exists, Captain Delaflote is tasked with staving off alien invasion and the rebellion of Dr. Valeria Grinder. (First Appearance: Episode 185!)

Paul-Henrie Delaflote (erased from normal continuity)

The genius who was inadvertently erased from history by Frederick’s love of a good Dirty Charlemagne, he can now only exist in stasis years, where his brilliant prescience is largely ignored by the cavalcade of adventurers around him. (First Appearance: Episode 44!)

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

Though Descartes’s first meeting with Frederick was less than auspicious, he came to have an odd but important role to play in the continent-spanning adventure of Queen Christina of Sweden (First Appearance: Episode 3!)

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

The partner of Leonhard Euler, the two form a team of independent time-travelers, reviled by the Power of Time, and not infrequently at cross purposes with Frederick’s team. Emily’s aura of Utter Loneliness is as potent as her martial arts acumen. (First Appearance: Episode 16!)

Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

The Dandy turned Prime Minister, his flowery flattery of Queen Victoria was both adorable and a little disturbing. Disraeli is responsible for handing over the Gilded Fopstick of Brummell to Frederick. (First Appearance: Episode 91!)

The Eigenpower

Controller of the Sixth Dimension, she is generally well disposed towards the Power of Time and Frederick’s team. A bit flighty and prone to explaining things through hand puppetry. (First Appearance: Episode 450!)

Elizabeth I of England (1533-1603)

On anybody’s Favorite Queen shortlist, she successfully played France and Spain off each other while rebuilding England’s economy and army, fended off repeated attempts at rebellion, employed dashing pirates to raid Spanish treasure ships, and led the great flowering of English dramatic and literary life. Our Elizabeth appears during the great battle to separate France from Europe. (First Appearance: Episode 348!)

Erasmus (1466-1536)

The Reformation produced a lot of jerks. People insistent that they, and only they, were right, and that everybody else was clearly the anti-Christ. Erasmus was not one of those jerks. Patiently trying to mediate between the Lutherans and the Catholics while producing beautiful works of humanist literature, his was the call for everybody to just, you know, chillax. And that is his role in the second story arc, as he introduces our team to the fateful delights of the Dirty Charlemagne. (First Appearance: Episode 42!)

Leonhard Euler (1707-1783)

The greatest mathematical analyst that ever was, he worked for Frederick the Great before going blind and becoming Catherine the Great’s chief mathematician. His published mathematical texts fill 80 volumes that redefined what calculus was and could be. Our Euler was resurrected by Calvin Coolidge, and has since become an independent agent, teaming with Emily Dickinson to save the timeline from Coolidge’s machinations. (First Appearance: Episode 16!)

Falco (1957-1998)

The Austrian pop sensation known for his hits, Rock Me Amadeus, Jeanny, and Helden von Heute, Falco’s power is his fundamental coolness, and his ability to walk handsomely in between parallel rows of strange people. (First Appearance: FtG Summer Special 2008, Episode 2!)

Richard Feynman (1918-1988)

Nobel Prize winning physicist and amateur bongo artiste, Feynman is recruited by Flaveraham for his comeback band, and ends up tapping into his Diagramming super powers in the climactic battle. (First Appearance: Episode 526!)

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

A daring and original thinker, a retiring and modest individual with a love for humor, Freud was everything Jung was not. Along with Joseph Campbell, he ventured into Picasso’s Collective Unconscious to stop Jung’s nefarious scheme. (First Appearance: Episode 398!)

The Power of Funk

The Seventh (and Final?) of the Dimensional Powers, his force is where the Flaveraham Lincoln transformation originates, and he plays a major role in convincing Abe to recover that power in the face of Baba Yaga’s machinations.(First Appearance: Episode 343!)

The Great Gama (1878-1960)

The wrestling superstar of the early 1900s, arguably the strongest man in the world at the height of his fame, he forms the Muscle of the Eastern Team. (First Appearance: Episode 250!)

Nice George III (1738-1820)

One of the three generals fielded by the Power of Possibility, he comes from an alternate world strand where George III was known for his balanced and caring approach to statesmanship. For some, however, he will always be a George III, and therefore dangerous. (First Appearance: Episode 434!)

William S. Gilbert (1836-1911)

Bilious but brilliant, Gilbert was the libretto-writing half of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, and as such the man responsible for such lines as “On a tree by a river a little tom tit sang willow, tit-willow, tit-willow.” Our Gilbert, after getting canned as an educator, forms the resolution to blow up Ireland. (First Appearance: Episode 180!)

Boris Godunov (1551-1605)

The wise regency of Boris Godunov, following the expansionist but violent era of Ivan the Terrible, was a high point of Russian history, a glimmering moment before the country plunged into the Time of Troubles. Our Boris is likewise a voice of reason who meets an untimely end at the hands of a composer in the best Russian tradition. (First Appearance: Episode 324!)

US Grant (1822-1885)

The man who, by pure blunt force, led the Union forces to eventual victory over the South in spite of rumors of battlefield drunkenness, he also, as president, oversaw one of the most corrupt administrations in presidential history. Our US Grant is a bear-riding tactical mastermind who must fend off Frederick Douglass’s Thoremerson monster. (First Appearance: Episode 120!)

Gudit (~960)

The Eastern Team’s warrior does not suffer fools. In history, Gudit was an Ethiopian ruler (probably) known for her ferocious grasp of power, and merciless elimination of the Christian element in her lands. (First Appearance: Episode 250!)

Edmond Halley (1656-1742)

The man who persuaded Newton to publish the Principia, he was also a tireless scientist who went on various adventures to complete the world’s first truly global scientific projects. He plays a role in rescuing 17th century England from the abuses of the Powered Up young Newton. (First Appearance: Episode 598!)

Henry VIII of England (1491-1547)

The dashing young warrior King whose decline into flabby flabbiness was marked by a succession of executed wives and the separation of England from the influence of Rome, Henry must fend off the dark schemes of Catherine of Aragon and Ignatius of Loyola in our second story arc. (First Appearance: Episode 54!)

Ivan the Fabulous (1530-1584)

Originally Ivan the Terrible, changes in the timeline thanks to Alexander the Great changed Moscow into a mecca of advanced civilization. Peter the Great attempts to reeducate Ivan in the ways of being a proper Russian tsar, with mixed results. (First Appearance: Episode 320!)

Al Jolson (1886-1950)

The greatest entertainer of his age, Jolson is now known largely as a racist caricature because of his work in blackface. In the comic, he arrives in the nick of time to save Vaudevillian Eddie Cantor from the clutches of Galactic Empress Theda Bara. (First Appearance: Episode 437!)

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)

The author of On the Road, which for many is the central codex of the Beat movement, he was for much of his life a troubled and substance abusing drifter. He serves as Abe’s spirit guide in his quest to regain The Funk. (First Appearance: Episode 483!)

Stan Lee (born 1922)

When Newton had to put together his own team for a top secret mission on behalf of Newtonkind, he knew he would need a man of broad and stirring imagination. Stan The Man was the only logical choice, really. (First Appearance: Newtonstravaganza 3!)

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716)

Philosopher and mathematician, Leibniz shares credit for having discovered calculus. His reputation as an orphan-saving, robot-building genius and humanitarian in the comic is endlessly frustrating to Newton. (First Appearance: Episode 119!)

Zhuge Liang (181-234)

The Eastern team’s strategist, with a Hundred Plans for any scenario. As known for his Three Kingdoms tactical brilliance as for his ongoing brain feud with Sir Isaac Newton (First Appearance: Episode 250!)

Flaveraham Lincoln

Lincoln’s alter ego, a cross between Dr. Teeth and Elton John, his power flows from The Funk, and allows Lincoln to achieve those feats of flashy strutting that the more staid Abe might balk at. (First Appearance: Episode 150!)

Ludwig II of Bavaria (1845-1886)

The so-called Mad King of Bavaria actually had a pretty bad rap. He was lonely and melancholic, and had to oversee a country that was fighting for its life against the growing power of Prussia. He found refuge in building awesome castles and commissioning epic operas from Richard Wagner and, really, wouldn’t you? (First Appearance: Episode 209!)

The Melvorne

Created by Newton to combat the Thoremerson, the Melvorne is a monster made by sewing Herman Melville onto Nathaniel Hawhtorne. (First Appearance: Episode 153!)

Meng-Tzu (372-289 BCE)

The Chinese philosopher better known as Mencius in the West, his role is to undo some of the damage that Frederick and Alexander’s drunken conquering spree wrought on the face of China. (First Appearance: Episode 258!)

Thelonious Monk (1917-1982)

One of the most controversial and exciting jazz pianists of all time, he is the first musician Abe rounds up to form his Baba Yaga defying ultimate band. (First Appearance: Episode 490!)

One of the group of great Russian composers known as The Five, he made drunkenness an aesthetic art form, and composed works too harmonically strange for his time, but which later ages would hail as fundamental to the modern spirit. Our Modest is, well, Peter the Great’s loyal horse. (First Appearance: Episode 215!)

Napoleon I (1769-1821)

The man who conquered Europe in the name of Revolution and himself, and ended his days in exile, Napoleon is the inspiration of a thousand Romantic essays featuring words like Geist and Gesellschaft. Sought out for his strategic brilliance, he gets inspired to new heights upon being shown The Empire Strikes Back. (First Appearance: Episode 82!)

Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

A professional revolutionary, Paine’s role in both the American and French Revolutions was profound. What is slightly less known is his secret role as part of Ethan Allen’s Zeitsgeschlaeger team. Abe encounters him in the Power-altered France of Empress Marie Antoinette. (First Appearance: Episode 592!)

Franklin Pierce (1804-1869)

As a President, Pierce was a staunch adherent to the Democratic party line. As a man, his life was darkened by an unrelenting string of tragedies including the death of his children on the way to his Inauguration, right in front of him. The one thing that keeps him going is his secret and forbidden love of Emily Dickinson. (First Appearance: Episode 414!)

Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)

There are seven different diseases that might have killed Edgar Allen Poe, which is the sign of a life well, if briefly, lived. Our Poe agrees to nobly help Frederick’s team in exchange for some quality narcotics. (First Appearance: Episode 134!)

Maximilien Robespierre (1758-1794)

After Marie Antoinette becomes Empowered in the destruction of the Collegium’s facilities, Robespierre is diverted from his fate as the architect of the Terror, and instead becomes Antoinette’s unwilling servant in combating the last fires of French revolutionary sentiment. (First Appearance: Episode 595!)

Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin (1805-1871)

The great magician of the nineteenth century, after whom Houdini named himself. He is the unwitting accomplice in one of Newton’s umpteen basically treacherous self-serving side schemes. (First Appearance: Episode 122!)

Count Rumford (1753-1814)

The spy turned scientist, Rumford’s evaluation of food, cloth, and metal for their practical properties revolutionized materials production. In the Frederickverse, he is a mercenary time agent, attending to the tasks too dirty or morally grey for the normal Zeitsgeschlaegers (First Appearance: Oktoberfest 2014, Part 1!)

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Mathematician and Philosopher, Russell’s mathematization of philosophy was a key component to the development of 20th Century British Empiricism. He is the second logician recruited to construct a perfect heist. (First Appearance: Episode 672!)

Nadir Shah (1688-1747)

The leader of the Eastern Time, the counterpart to Frederick’s team for time paradoxes involving Asia, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent. Pragmatic and fundamentally competent, he is ever struck anew by the flailing leadership style of Frederick (First Appearance: Episode 250!)

Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900)

The music-writing half of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. By a twist of fate involving pigs, he has ended up as a forlorn tuba player in the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. (First Appearance: Episode 197!)

The Power of Space

The Third of the Dimensional powers, Space is essentially the peacekeeper between the four primary dimensions. Sympathetic to Time, he works to keep Area’s suspicions at bay. (First Appearance: Episode 355!)

Swedemangle

A Space Bernard puppy whom Abe Lincoln finds in the Far Future and brings back to Sanssouci in spite of Frederick’s unfortunate history with pooches. As a gesture of conciliation, Peter the Great is allowed to name it. (First Appearance: Episode 203!)

The Symposium of Newtons

The congress of Newtons from different timelines would be a potent and dangerous force for the universe if they weren’t quite so intent on betraying/vaporizing each other. (First Appearance: Episode 378!)

Empress Theodora (500-548)

The inspiration for Pretty Woman, Empress Theodora was a prostitute turned Empress, the wife of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian. Portrayed in Procopius’s Secret History as vain, money-hungry, and cruel, history generally accepts her as a powerful and competent monarch. She is the director of the Eastern Team. (First Appearance: Episode 301!)

The Power of Time

The Fourth of the Dimensional powers, the Zeitsgeschlaegers serve her (in theory) to maintain the integrity of the timeline. Constantly frustrated with Frederick’s shenanigans, at the same time, after eight long years, she still hasn’t stripped him of his time-powered chapeau. Works against the Power of Possibility to maintain the universe as it stands. First appeared As A Man, baby! (First Appearance: Episode 4!)

Kate Warne (1833-1868)

The first female detective of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, her life is appropriately something of a mystery. In the comic, Warne shows up first as a young child in a graveyard, providing help to Frederick’s team in exchange for an unnamed future favor. (First Appearance: Episode 135!)

Orson Welles (1915-1985)

Prepare the standard Rich and Famous Contract! Getting Welles to agree to make a film about the Coleridge poem Xanadu is crucial to Frederick’s grand Heist. (First Appearance: Episode 676!)

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

The fop of fops and dandy of dandies, Wilde’s brisk wit and luxurious lifestyle served as fodder for one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operas. He is consulted in the G & S story arc as to the best way to dapperly dress a high explosive. (First Appearance: Episode 230!)

Roger Williams (1603-?)

Roger Williams was great. Exiled from Massachusetts for his belief in the separation of religion and government, he was also one of the only men of his time to recognize the injustice of the European treatment of the Indians, and worked hard to see them fairly treated in negotiations. As the only Honest Man in history, he is a deadly weapon in the fight against the Collegium. (First Appearance: Winter Special 2011, Part 6!)

Villains!

Ethan Allen (1738-1789)

The Revolutionary War hero who seized Fort Ticonderoga, Ethan Allen plays a dark and uncertain role in the annals of the Zeitsgeschlaegers. The hero turned villain is seemingly mending his ways, or is he merely biding his time??? (First Appearance: Episode 31!)

Marie Antoinette (1755-1793)

In the great explosion of the Collegium, Marie Antoinette receives an injection of Historical Power that allows her to turn the tide of the French Revolution and place herself as absolute ruler of the French people. (First Appearance: Episode 586!)

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918)

Modernist poet and eternal Picasso cheerleader, he is the painter’s second in command in the attempt to invade and colonize the Collective Unconscious. (First Appearance: Episode 371!)

Galactic Empress Theda Bara (1885-1955)

The most risque of the silent screen film stars, Theda Bara was known for her striking eyes, daring costumes, and overwrought facial expressions. Plucked bg the Power of Possibility from an alternate timeline, she uses her dread powers of Emoting to attempt to fight back the Fortress Improbable’s attackers. (First Appearance: Episode 434!)

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)

The author of The Second Sex and foundational figure in Second Wave Feminism, de Beauvoir harnesses the power of gender transformation technology with Alfred Kinsey to effect a change in the world’s gender power structures. (First Appearance: Episode 477!)

Beaver

Ethan Allen’s most deadly covert agent, Beaver sports a secret weapon that rapidly ages its target, a power he uses to profound effect against Abe Lincoln. He is moderately less treacherous than Thresher. (First Appearance: Episode 125!)

Hans von Bulow (1830-1894)

Historically, Hans von Bulow is known as the first conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and as the man who willingly surrendered his wife to Richard Wagner, whom he idolized. In the comic, he competes in a conductor’s duel with Peter the Great for the soul of Arthur Sullivan. (First Appearance: Episode 217!)

Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536)

First wife of Henry VIII, her inability to produce an heir led to England’s abandoning Roman Catholicism. In the Frederickverse, she is plotting with Ignatius of Loyola to unmake the Scientific Revolution. (First Appearance: Episode 54!)

The Collegium

A super secret society of graduate students and professors who siphon power from philosophers and historical figures to fuel their own bottomless thirst for plausible academic journal filler. (First Appearance: Episode 577!)

Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)

Silent Cal oversaw the prosperity of the roaring American Twenties with a bland The Business of America is Business approach to society. In order to keep the height of his presidency eternal, he resurrects Euler and studies the dark arts, eventually becoming one of the most powerful masters of darkness ever known to the world. (First Appearance: Episode 175!)

Salvador Dali (1904-1989)

The first villain Frederick faced, Dali comes armed with the full powers of surrealism, a surprising competency in accountancy, and an army of alligators bearing clocks in their stomachs. (First Appearance: Episode 7!)

Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)

Corrupted by Allen’s dark historical powers, Douglass seeks a way out of his people’s plight at all costs, even if that means delving into the dark wizardry of monster creation. He now resides, for increasingly obscure reasons, with Frederick’s team in Sanssouci.

The quasi-psychotic lover of Apollinaire and odd jobs man for Picasso, he was famous for smuggling works of art out of the Louvre in his trousers and for his flights of violence. (First Appearance: Episode 371!)

Dr. Valeria Grinder (The Far Future)

Dr. Grinder leads a movement that resists the changes Frederick’s actions have wrought in the distant future, and teams with Ethan Allen to attempt to destroy the sources of Frederick’s power. (First Appearance: Episode 181!)

Professor Hardarson (The Far Future)

Dr. Grinder’s assistant in her battle against Frederick’s influence on the timeline. (First Appearance: Episode 188!)

Robert Hooke (1635-1703)

Perhaps the greatest experimental physicist ever, his inventions could fill pages. Unfortunately, he was as combative as he was brilliant, and picked academic fights with every scientist of note in the 17th century, including a withering attack on Isaac Newton’s first public science paper that nearly kept the young scientist from ever publishing his work again. (First Appearance: Episode 421!)

Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556)

The villain of Frederick’s second adventure, Loyola’s clandestine scheming to rewrite the history of the Reformation was aided by Franz von Sickingen and Catherine of Aragon, and not remotely aided by a convenient moose. (First Appearance: Episode 34!)

Carl Jung (1875-1961)

Jung was a terrible person and a sloppy, underwhelming thinker. In the comic, he is manipulated by Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire into opening a gateway to the Collective Unconscious. (First Appearance: Episode 385!)

Alfred Kinsey (1894-1956)

Kinsey’s work on American sexuality shocked a notion with its mounds of data that suggested that yes, in fact, most people do masturbate from time to time. He is caught up in Simone de Beauvoir’s gender alteration schemes, and ultimately gets it on for a while with a female version of Voltaire. (First Appearance: Episode 495!)

President Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924)

The third of the Power of Possibility’s alternate timeline warriors, this Lenin is the leader of a democratic and thoroughly capitalist Russia. He spends a fair amount of time both giant and nude. (First Appearance: Episode 434!)

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

A deadly assassin trained by Ludwig Feuerbach, Marx wields the ability to dialectically erase historical personages form existence, and uses that power to eliminate one of the members of Frederick’s main team. (First Appearance: Episode 410!)

James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879)

Maxwell’s four laws of electromagnetism created the modern world, it is fair to say. Less publicized is his dabbling with the resurrection of the Elder Gods to wreak havoc and destruction on the world. (First Appearance: Episode 220!)

Perhaps it is their very Middlin’-ness that makes this trio such a powerful set of covert agents. Perhaps their ability to transform into Rutherborg B. Hayes, Drover Cleveland, and Bigfoot Ben Harrison also play a role. All we know is, DON’T mention Venice. (First Appearance: FtG Presents: An Opposing Viewpoint!)

The Mural Men

Through her magic arts, Baba Yaga summoned the men of the Coit Tower murals to life to fight for her in the grand Battle of the Bands competition, prompting an ethical discussion about whether killing representations of workers is morally objectionable. (First Appearance: Episode 543!)

Necrohunters

Designed by Leibniz, their primary role is to hunt down necromancers, but over the years these giant robots have saved the world from Elder Gods and deranged funk-craving magicians. (First Appearance: Episode 210!)

The Old One

Summoned by James Clerk Maxwell to devour the world, the Old One has to first contend with a giant Leibniz Necrohunter robot, not to mention Oscar Wilde’s incomparable sense of style. (First Appearance: Episode 237!)

Philip II of Spain (1527-1598)

Philip’s religious zeal led him from costly fiasco to costly fiasco. Not above using assassins to eliminate his political opponents, he squandered the work of Charles V and so broke Spain that its position as a European power was basically forfeit by the end of his reign. Peter brings Ivan the Fabulous to Philip for dastardly monarch training. (First Appearance: Episode 324!)

The Philosophers (Jacques Lacan, Julie Kristeva, Jacques Derrida)

Drained of their essences to feed the Collegium’s bottomless hunger for new analytic ideas, upon the Collegium’s destruction their powers combine to form a powerful dread monster. (First Appearance: Summer 2012 Preview, Part 2!)

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

Should we talk about Picasso less and Braque more? Probably, but his ability to consistently, over decades, produce definitive artistic statements was as unparalleled as his personal unpleasantness. Infected by the Power of Possibility with the ability to see in five dimensions, he uses this power to further his plans to take over the entire world’s artistic output. (First Appearance: Episode 371!)

The Power of Possibility

The fifth of the Dimensional powers, Possibility revels in dreams of undoing the Time’s beloved Standard Timeline. The black sheep of the Dimensional family. (First Appearance: Episode 309!)

The Marquis de Sade (1740-1814)

Summoned by Salvador Dali, it is soon apparent that de Sade’s vision of the new world is more extreme than expected - further evidence of the possible dangers of resurrecting all powerful Sadists. (First Appearance: Episode 25!)

Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

The great popularizer of science and astronomy of the Twentieth Century, he is infected by the Collegium’s power surge and forms a bold plan to reshape human history. (First Appearance: Summer 2012 Preview Part 4!)

John Searle (b. 1932)

The great opponent of the Derrida school of philosophical analysis, his Speech Acts defined a new way of thinking about linguistic discourse without the chaos of deconstrunctionist notions. He is an adviser to the Collegium’s dread purpose, for now. (First Appearance: Summer 2012 Preview Part 2!)

Malyuta Skuratov (? – 1573)

The head of Ivan the Terrible’s ruthless police force, wholesale slaughter was his business. Thanks to Alexander the Great’s alteration of the timeline, he finds himself in an idealized Russia, fighting between his refined upbringing and his basic desire to, you know, murder. (First Appearance: Episode 324!)

William Howard Taft (1857-1930)

As President, Supreme Court Justice, and leader of the Senate, Taft is the only person to hold the Triple Crown of American high offices. He is the leader of the Middlin Presidents cabal. (First Appearance: Episode 494!)

Tertiary Crankshaft

A crucial component of Allen’s dread Combine Harvester, during Allen’s house arrest, it is up to Tertiary to find the pieces of art to entertain Allen in his seclusion. Possibly in love with Queen Christina of Sweden. (First Appearance: Episode 109!)

The Thoremerson (1817-1862 and 1803-1882)

When Frederick Douglass first created this grand monster of transcendentalism, it was with a view to establishing a new land of freedom, but soon the sheer destructive power of Emerson’s self-reliance wedded to Thoreau’s knowledge of bean yields proved too much to control. (First Appearance: Episode 80!)

Thresher

The primary henchman of Ethan Allen, and a crucial component of his dread Combine Harvester ultimate summon, Thresher has been destroyed and rebuilt several times in Allen’s service. (First Appearance: Episode 31!)

The forest witch of Russia, Abe first encounters her on the outskirts of Ideal Moscow, where she gives him the ability to speak with animals, for a price. She eventually challenges him to a grand Battle of the Bands for the future of The Funk. (First Appearance: Episode 326!)

NEUTRALS

The Power of Area

The second of the Dimensions, Area does not trust Time’s unwieldy attempts to maintain the integrity of the four primary dimensions, but is largely held in check by Space and Length. (First Anthropomorphized Appearance: Episode 637!)

Archduke Franz Ferdinand (1863-1914)

The man whose assassination triggered the series of events that led to the First World War, our Ferdinand has the strange ability to casually Not Get Himself Killed at every turn. (First Appearance: Episode 360!)

James Joule (1818-1889)

If you’ve been in a chemistry of physics class, you’ve worked with Joules as the standard unit of energy. Well, there was a dude behind those, this dude! Frederick Douglass contracts him to build a locomotive capable of jumping to Mexico. (First Appearance: Episode 94!)

The Power of Length

The First of the Dimensional Powers, he is not so acerbic as Area, nor so given to compromise as Space, his intentions and motivations are largely hidden. (First Anthropomorphized Appearance: Episode 637!)

Richard Wagner (1813-1883)

Egomaniacal in the extreme, he was also perhaps the greatest operatic composer the world has or ever will know. He is the leader of the International Composer’s Guild that gives Frederick his first clue as to where to find Arthur Sullivan. (First Appearance: Episode 215!)

ITEMS

Baby Portraits

When redecorating Empress Theodora’s palace, Frederick had recourse to seemingly hundreds of tapestries, throw rugs, and paintings depicting babies as the muses of various arts. These continue to be bones of contention with his various housemates. (First Appearance: Episode 450!)

Burlap Tossing Dwarves

Lacking real dwarves to toss at the new Sanssouci stasis year location, Peter the Great had recourse to construct these burlap sack dwarf facsimiles that are basically always screaming. (First Appearance: Episode 625!)

The Cube

A reward for an early mission success, the Cube, emblazoned with the symbol c^2, was initially supposed to refer to Albert Einstein, but turned out to serve a purpose far darker. (First Appearance: Episode 32!)

The Fopstick of Brummell

Given to Frederick by Benjamin Disraeli, its secret power is that it accessorizes with ANYTHING! (First Appearance: Episode 91!)

Froot Piez

The secret obsession of Grover Cleveland, these pies, originally advertised by Friedrich Nietzsche, are potent forces indeed. (First Appearance: The Training of a Fop 104)

Sanssouci

After the implosion of their original Stasis Year, and a spell double bunking with the Eastern Team in their Stasis Year, Frederick’s team was rewarded with a new safehouse, which happened to be Frederick’s very own palace on a hill, Sanssouci! Visitors to Sanssouci today can see the very chair where Frederick breathed his last, attended by nobody but his beloved dogs. (First Appearance: Episode 573!)